David Malukas was released by Arrow McLaren on Monday without running an IndyCar race for the team because of injuries the 22-year-old suffered in an offseason mountain biking crash.
Malukas was signed in September to the three-car IndyCar team when McLaren was in a late scramble to fill a seat because two-time series champion Alex Palou breached his contract and declined to join the team as planned in 2024.
The job suddenly fell to Malukas, who was still looking for a confirmed third season in IndyCar. Although he's done all the social media and marketing McLaren asked of him, he dislocated his wrist and tore tendons when he crashed on his mountain bike one month before the season-opening race.
The team believed the Feb. 11 accident would cost Malukas two races. But when he could not compete Sunday at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, it was his fourth consecutive missed race and triggered a clause in his contract that allowed McLaren to terminate the deal.
McLaren said in a statement Malukas has been “unavailable for the entirety of the season to date, with no confirmed return date, as a result of a left wrist injury, which occurred February 11, in a mountain biking incident.”
He also couldn't participate in the open test for the Indianapolis 500.
Malukas thanked McLaren for the opportunity, noting his rehab was taking longer than expected.
“The past three months have been challenging. I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to drive for Arrow McLaren and regret that it never materialized. I would have loved to have continued representing the team and its partners going forward," Malukas said. “They have been good, and I appreciate all they have done for me. I’ve done everything possible to speed up the rehab process—treatments, physiotherapy, strength training — but my recovery has taken longer than anticipated.”
McLaren has used Callum Ilott and Theo Pouchaire over the first four races, and the duo could combine to complete the season. Both have superseding commitments in other racing series that prohibit either from joining Pato O'Ward and Alexander Rossi full time.
Ilott moved to 11th in his McLaren debut at St. Petersburg following the disqualification of two Team Penske cars. He didn't advance out of the heat races to compete in the $1 million exhibition race at Thermal.
Pourchaire is the reigning Formula 2 champion and finished 11th in his IndyCar debut at Long Beach and 22nd on Sunday in what was an overall bad day for McLaren. O'Ward was 23rd and Rossi retired with a mechanical problem.
McLaren had hinted that it was running out of time on Malukas during the Long Beach race weekend earlier this month.
“The team has been very supportive of David, but what’s more unfortunate is his injury is much more serious than we thought initially,” McLaren team principal Gavin Ward said over the weekend.
“A big part of our focus has been trying to help him in every way in his recovery, but we’ve also been spending an awful lot of time to make sure we have competitive drivers in the No. 6 car. Unfortunately, it’s just a lot of uncertainty right now,” Ward said. “And we’re having to make difficult decisions. We’re doing our best to try and take care of him, but at the end of the day, we also have to look after the performance of the team.”
Malukas won seven of 20 IndyNXT races with 16 podiums during a fierce 2021 battle for the championship he lost to Kyle Kirkwood. But he earned a seat in the IndyCar Series with Dale Coyne Racing, even though Malukas' ride was largely funded by family money. Driving for an underfunded and small Coyne team, Malukas scored two podiums over two seasons.
He was also fast in the Indianapolis 500 and proved competitive with Team Penske cars each year at Gateway. Even so, he wasn't a candidate for a top ride when he decided he wouldn't return to Coyne in 2024.
That changed in mid-August when McLaren learned Palou had decided to remain at Chip Ganassi Racing and breach his contract with McLaren. The two sides are stuck in an expensive civil lawsuit.
McLaren had few options available so late in free agency and chose Malukas, who won't get a chance to make his debut.
“Every injury is different and every body heals at a different pace,” Malukas said. "I’ll turn my full attention to getting back to 100% and then prove that I am ready and able to compete to win.”
AP IndyCar: https://apnews.com/hub/indycar
FILE - Alfa Romeo test driver Theo Pourchaire, of France, drives during a practice session for the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix auto race at Circuit of the Americas, Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, in Austin, Texas. Pourchaire faces a new challenge after his IndyCar debut in going from the streets of Long Beach to the road course at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. The 20-year old Frenchman, who is the reigning Formula 2 champion, gets his second turn racing for injured Arrow McLaren driver David Malukas on Sunday. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
FILE - David Malukas sits in a safety truck after escaping his car that caught fire during the Music City Grand Prix auto race Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. David Malukas was released by Arrow McLaren on Monday, April 29, 2024, without ever running an IndyCar race for the team because of injuries the 22-year-old suffered in an offseason mountain biking crash. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
FILE - David Malukas prepares before the start of an IndyCar auto race at World Wide Technology Raceway, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, in Madison, Ill. David Malukas was released by Arrow McLaren on Monday, April 29, 2024, without ever running an IndyCar race for the team because of injuries the 22-year-old suffered in an offseason mountain biking crash. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.
The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation as food and other supplies fail to make it in as Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border.
Fraught with logistical, weather and security challenges, the maritime route is designed to bolster the amount of aid getting into the Gaza Strip, but it is not considered a substitute for far cheaper land-based deliveries that aid agencies say are much more sustainable. The boatloads of aid will be deposited at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.
Heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of Rafah has displaced some 600,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, U.N. officials say. Another 100,000 civilians have fled parts of northern Gaza now that the Israeli military has restarted combat operations there.
Pentagon officials said the fighting in Gaza wasn’t threatening the new shoreline aid distribution area, but they have made it clear that security conditions will be monitored closely and could prompt a shutdown of the maritime route, even just temporarily. Already, the site has been targeted by mortar fire during its construction and Hamas has threatened to target any foreign forces who “occupy” the Gaza Strip.
The “protection of U.S. forces participating is a top priority. And as such, in the last several weeks, the United States and Israel have developed an integrated security plan to protect all the personnel," said Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, a deputy commander at the U.S. military's Central Command. "We are confident in the ability of this security arrangement to protect those involved.”
U.S. troops anchored the pier at 7:40 a.m. local time Thursday, the military's Central Command said, stressing that none of its forces entered the Gaza Strip and would not during the pier's operations.
“Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days,” the command said. “The United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza.”
The World Food Program will be the U.N. program handling the aid, officials said.
Israeli forces will be in charge of security on the shore, but there are also two U.S. Navy warships near the area in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the USS Arleigh Burke and the USS Paul Ignatius. Both ships are destroyers equipped with a wide range of weapons and capabilities to protect American troops off shore and allies on the beach.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani confirmed that the pier had been attached and that Israeli engineering units had flattened ground around the area and surfaced roads for trucks.
“We have been working for months on full cooperation with (the U.S. military) on this project, facilitating it, supporting it in any way possible,” Shoshani said. “It’s a top priority in our operation.”
Aid agencies say they are running out of food in southern Gaza and fuel is dwindling, which will force hospitals to shut down critical operations and halt truck deliveries of aid. The U.N. and others have warned for weeks that an Israel assault on Rafah would cripple humanitarian operations and cause a disastrous surge in civilian casualties.
More than 1.4 million Palestinians — half of Gaza’s population — have been sheltering in Rafah, most after fleeing Israel’s offensives elsewhere.
The first cargo ship loaded with 475 pallets of food left Cyprus last week to rendezvous with a U.S. military ship, the Roy P. Benavidez, which is off the coast of Gaza. The pallets of aid on the MV Sagamore were moved onto the Benavidez. The Pentagon said moving the aid between ships was an effort to be ready so it could flow quickly once the pier and the causeway were installed.
The installation of the pier several miles (kilometers) off the coast and of the causeway, which is now anchored to the beach, was delayed for nearly two weeks because of bad weather. The sea conditions made it too dangerous for U.S. and Israeli troops to secure the causeway to the shore, U.S. officials said.
Military leaders have said the deliveries of aid will begin slowly to ensure the system works. They will start with about 90 truckloads of aid a day through the sea route, and that number will quickly grow to about 150 a day. But aid agencies say that isn't enough to avert impending famine in Gaza and must be just one part of a broader Israeli effort to open land corridors.
Because land crossings could bring in all the needed aid if Israeli officials allowed, the U.S.-built pier-and-sea route “is a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization.
Biden used his State of the Union address on March 7 to order the military to set up a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, establishing a sea route to deliver food and other aid. Food shipments have been backed up at land crossings amid Israeli restrictions and intensifying fighting.
Under the new sea route, humanitarian aid is dropped off in Cyprus where it will undergo inspection and security checks at Larnaca port. It is then loaded onto ships — mainly commercial vessels — and taken about 200 miles (320 kilometers) to the large floating pier built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast.
There, the pallets are transferred onto trucks, driven onto smaller Army boats and then shuttled several miles (kilometers) to the floating causeway, which has been anchored onto the beach by the Israeli military. The trucks, which are being driven by personnel from another country, will go down the causeway into a secure area on land where they will drop off the aid and immediately turn around and return to the boats.
Aid groups will collect the supplies for distribution on shore, with the U.N. working with the U.S. Agency for International Development to set up the logistics hub on the beach.
Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters that the project will cost at least $320 million, including the transportation of the equipment and pier sections from the United States to the coast of Gaza, as well as the construction and aid delivery operations.
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Julia Frankel in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
US military says Gaza Strip pier project is completed, aid to soon flow as Israel-Hamas war rages on
US military says Gaza Strip pier project is completed, aid to soon flow as Israel-Hamas war rages on
In this image provided by the U.S. Army, soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) and sailors attached to the MV Roy P. Benavidez assemble the Roll-On, Roll-Off Distribution Facility (RRDF), or floating pier, off the shore of Gaza on April 26, 2024. The U.S. expects to have on-the-ground arrangements in Gaza ready for humanitarian workers to start delivering aid this month via a new U.S.-backed sea route for Gaza aid. An official with the U.S. Agency for International Development tells the AP that humanitarian groups expect to have their part of preparations complete by early to mid-month. (U.S. Army via AP)
